This week gave me a great opportunity to learn what my peers have been doing in the lab every day! While every project is unique and very different, Rena’s work is especially exciting. Most of the members of BSURF are spending their days inside, but Rena gets to go to three different sites and collect aquatic insects. Her lab experience strikes me as different from my days spent pipetting, so I enjoyed listening to Rena’s chalk talk.
When worrying about issues such as climate change and pollution we tend to consider larger mammals, such as polar bears, to be the organisms most affected. However, Rena is using bugs as bioindicators of local creek health and has found a direct correlation between the size of macroinvertebrates and the quality of the water. To test different quality levels, Rena looks are a creek in a preserved area (Duke Forest), and two sites along the Ellerbe Creek, which is in an urbanized area. Between these two sites at Ellerbe Creek is a waste water treatment plant. These sites not only can be used to compare preserved and urbanized areas, but also the affects of introducing treatemtn water back into the ecosystem.
Rena’s project is well though out, making sure to include data about the density of insects, the different genus found, and their size. As she mentioned in her chalk talk, this gives a better picture of the ecosystem than any one factor alone. Moving foward, I hope Rena gets to take samples from multiple locations along her sites to get an even better idea of how insects are impacted by water quality. I am excited to see how the rest of her project goes and hopefully some results!
